I got tired of GitHub deleting my traffic stats after 14 days, so I built a local-first alternative 🚀

#showdev #github #opensource #productivity

Hey DEV community! 👋

If you maintain open-source projects on GitHub, you probably love checking your repository's "Insights" tab. Seeing people clone, view, and star your project is an amazing feeling.

But there are two catches that have always frustrated me:

The Tedious Click-Fest: To see how your projects are doing, you have to manually open GitHub in your browser, navigate to each repository individually, click "Insights", and then click "Traffic". If you maintain 5+ repos, this becomes a chore real quick.
The 14-Day Limit: Even worse, GitHub only keeps your traffic data for exactly 14 days.

If you don't check your stats within that window, that data is gone forever. If you want a unified view and historical data, you either have to manually scrape it yourself, write a cron job, or pay a monthly subscription for a third-party SaaS tool.

I didn't want to do any of those. So, I built my own solution.

🌟 Enter: Repo-rter

Repo-rter is a completely free, 100% open-source desktop application available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

It fetches your GitHub traffic data and caches it locally on your machine, meaning you never lose your historical stats again.

TIP
Privacy First: Unlike SaaS alternatives, Repo-rter doesn't store your Personal Access Token (PAT) on any server. Everything runs locally on your machine, so your data remains strictly yours.

✨ Key Features

Infinite History: Automatically merges new traffic data with your local cache. Say goodbye to the 14-day limit!
Release Downloads Tracker: Wondering how many people downloaded your .exe or .dmg? Repo-rter tracks total and individual asset downloads across all your releases.

Neo-Brutalist UI: I wanted the app to be fun to use, so it features a vibrant, gamified Neo-Brutalist design.
Export to Markdown: Need to show off your stats? Generate and download a beautiful Markdown report of your repo's health and traffic with one click.
Cross-Platform: Built with Tauri, it's incredibly lightweight and runs natively on Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon & Intel), and Linux.

🛠️ The Tech Stack

I wanted to build something fast, lightweight, and modern. Here is what powers Repo-rter:

Framework: Next.js (App Router) + React
Desktop Runtime: Tauri v2
Styling: TailwindCSS (with custom Neo-Brutalist utility classes)
Data Fetching: React Query
Charts: Recharts

Using Tauri instead of Electron was a game-changer. The app bundle size is incredibly small (around ~15MB), and it uses the native OS webview (WebKit on Mac, WebView2 on Windows), making memory consumption practically non-existent compared to heavy Electron apps.

🚀 Try it out!

You can grab the latest version (v0.3.0) for your OS directly from the Releases page.

Setup takes exactly 30 seconds:

Download and open the app.
Generate a fine-grained GitHub PAT (Read-only access to Metadata & Administration).
Paste it in, and watch your dashboard light up!